Annabel Lee
by annam8td
Summary: OneShot about Lance leaving to begin his career with SHIELD. Lancitty


A/N: This fic is courtesy of my English class, and a poem I chose to read by Edgar Allen Poe rather than pay attention to one by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I wrote this like I would a songfic, though I'd like to make it perfectly clear that this is not a song, it's a poem. Kinda schmaltzy, but when I first read through it, my mind wandered to X-Men Evolution. I'm so mature for a 19 year old . Enjoy!

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Lance Alvers opened the door to his bedroom at the Brotherhood Boarding House for one last time. Cardboard box and backpack in tow, Lance set about the task of packing up his things. Not that he brought much with him years ago when he moved from Northbrook to Bayville a few years back, but he had enough to fill his backpack and the box he had been given by SHIELD. That's right, SHIELD. The secret government organization had been so gracious that they supplied him with a box to store his things. Though to be fair, SHIELD had offered a whole moving crew to help Lance and his housemates move, and while the others accepted the help, Lance declined, preferring to not have strangers rummaging through what few things he had. First things first, Lance took a few things off the top of his dresser and shelves—gloves, a few tools for working on his car, a hair brush—and threw them in the box. He threw the pillow off his bed near the box (he preferred to carry it), and then set about emptying his closer and dresser drawers. After tossing some sheets and another blanket into the box, Lance packed his backpack with clothes. He didn't have many, but he had enough to make the backpack difficult to close.

He pulled all of the other drawers open, to ensure that he wouldn't forget anything, and came across a worn book with a dark blue cover and picture of a black bird on the cover. Not just any plain black bird though, this was a raven. Lance read the title, Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, and smirked. The rough and tumble, earth shaking mutant would never admit it, but he liked Edgar Allen Poe, and all of the dark stories of loss and despair. There were even a few poems he had bookmarked with sticky notes, that he would read on a boring night when he was sure all of his housemates were asleep. If they knew he liked a little bit of poetry, they would taunt him relentlessly. Feeling a bit nostalgic, Lance looked over his shoulder to see that he closed his bedroom door behind him, he sat with his back against the dresser and opened the book. He flipped through the pages delicately, and read the titles quickly, trying to find one that would fit his mood. He stopped flipping when he found a picture pressed into the pages; this picture was of him and the only X-Man he could tolerate, Kitty Pryde.

Lance looked at the picture and smiled. It was of the two of them from the Sadie Hawkins Dance back in the day, when the two were still high schoolers. Kitty looked pretty in her blue two piece outfit, and happy to be standing next to her bad boy, who had abandoned his usual jeans and black t-shirt look for something more formal. Kitty was beaming in the photo, hugging his waist, and with his arm around her shoulders, the two did look pretty happy. He slid the picture to the back of the book, and read the poem that was bookmarked; Annabel Lee.

_It was many and many a year ago,_  
_In a kingdom by the sea,_  
_That a maiden there lived whom you may know_  
_By the name of Annabel Lee;_  
_And this maiden she lived with no other thought_  
_Than to love and be loved by me._

Lance met the X-Man a few years back. They met when he lived in Northbrook, and they attended the same high school. He had seen Kitty Pryde roaming the halls, carrying an excessive amount of text books and folders, looking down at the ground like all of the smart, lonely kids do. He had never known her name, until the day she fell through her locker, and into his life. Since Lance considered himself a bad ass, he tried to exploit her newfound ability, and after bringing down a roof on top of Kitty, their lives were intertwined.

I was a child and she was a child,  
In this kingdom by the sea;  
But we loved with a love that was more than love-  
I and my Annabel Lee;  
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven  
Coveted her and me.

Kitty was fifteen when the two met, and Lance was eighteen, though their ages were never something they considered when they first met. Kitty was shaken by the fact that this boy she had trusted to teach her how to use her powers had used her for his own selfish gain, and then tried to eliminate her when she fought back. It had shaken (no pun intended) the both of them when he found that Kitty had relocated to Bayville at the same time, and that they were even in the same chemistry class. After the initial period of awkwardness and her staring daggers at him, Kitty and Lance began to talk, and form a friendship. That friendship quickly became something more, something that kept her on his mind, and he in hers. 

And this was the reason that, long ago,  
In this kingdom by the sea,  
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling  
My beautiful Annabel Lee;  
So that her highborn kinsman came  
And bore her away from me,  
To shut her up in a sepulchre  
In this kingdom by the sea.

While the other X-Men were skeptical, and some even downright opposed to their relationship, as were the other members of the Brotherhood Boarding house, the two continued to see each other. But while some relationships had bumps in the road, Kitty and Lance's relationship seemed to have mountains in the way, and they would break up, get back together, and break up again. After a while, some of X-Men, Scott Summers and Kurt Wagner in particular, began vocalizing their disapproval, and bit by bit the two would plant seeds of doubt in Kitty's mind. They also enlisted the help of one of their instructors, the rough and tumble Wolverine, to keep the two apart. It was like Romeo and Juliet, but with guards who vaporize, lobotomize, slice_ and_ dice simultaneously, electrocute, freeze, impale, and even transport Romeo to the middle of nowhere if they found him hiding near her bedroom window. 

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,  
Went envying her and me-  
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,  
In this kingdom by the sea)  
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,  
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

There were some X-Men who appeared jealous of Lance and Kitty; Lance attributed that jealously to the fact that Kitty had chosen him above them, rather than them being jealous about the state of their relationship. All of the outside emotions finally made an impact on Kitty, and over time she began to listen to them. Her mind drifted from having a future with Lance in New York, to going to college back home.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love  
Of those who were older than we-  
Of many far wiser than we-  
And neither the angels in heaven above,  
Nor the demons down under the sea,  
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul  
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams  
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;  
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes  
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;  
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side  
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,  
In the sepulchre there by the sea,  
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

OK, so the rest of their relationship didn't follow the poem, and Lance breathed a sigh of relief at the fact that Kitty was neither captive nor dead. Though the state of the relationship disintegrated, and passion was replaced by friendship, which gradually dulled became nothingness. Lance placed the photo between the pages once more, and tossed the book into his box. He slung his backpack over his shoulder, tucked his pillow under his arm, and after glancing around his room for a final time, resolved to call Kitty after he situated himself wherever SHIELD chose to relocate him. After all, she was his Annabel Lee, he wanted to let her know that he still thought about her, his darling, in this kingdom by the sea.

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A/N: OK, so I've never been good at ending these one-shots, so I'm not so sure about how everyone else will receive it. Reviews would be nice, so I can work on future one-shots.


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